Journalism for Women | Page 2

If anyone doubts it, let him listen to a debate
in the House of Commons, and compare the impressions of the evening
with the impressions furnished by the parliamentary sketch in his daily
paper the next morning. The difference will be little less than
miraculous. Yet the bored observer of the previous night will find in
the printed article no discrepancies, no insidious departures from sober
fact; and as he reads it, the conviction will grow upon him that his own
impressions were wrong, and that after all a debate in the House of
Commons is a remarkably amusing and delightful entertainment. If the
newspapers ceased to report the proceedings of Parliament, the
uncomfortable benches of the Strangers' Gallery would for ever remain
empty, simply because the delusion which now fills them nightly
during the session would die for lack of sustenance. Again, take the
case of the amiable feminine crowds which collect upon the Mall
whenever Her Majesty holds a Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace.
What has induced them to forsake lunch and the domestic joys in order
to frequent that draughty thoroughfare? Nothing but accounts which
they have read in vivacious newspapers of the sights to be seen there on
these state occasions. They go; they see; they return fatigued and
privately disappointed, with a vague feeling that some one has misled
them. But with the arrival later in the afternoon of the vendor of special
editions, they begin to be reassured. Under the heading "To-day's
Drawing Room," they encounter a description of incidents which they

themselves have witnessed. The sweet thought crosses their minds:
"Perhaps that was written by the curious woman with eye-glasses who
stood near to me;" and by the time dinner is over nothing would
persuade them that the Mall on Drawing Room day is not one of the
most interesting places in the world.
So the journalist continues to gain a livelihood by forcing his rosy
fallacies upon the weary world.
* * * * *
In order to substantiate further the proposition that the art of journalism
is the art of lending interest to people and events intrinsically dull, let
me draw attention to the treatment accorded by editors to those rare
trifles of information which by general agreement are not in themselves
dull. Such an item, a jewel of its kind, was the following: I copy it as it
was allowed to appear in an evening newspaper justly renowned for
enterprise, talent, and imagination, under date 16th January, 1897:
"While walking in the Park at Tsarskoe Selo the Tsar beckoned to a
gardener. The man hastened to obey, but a guard, thinking he was
running up to attack the Emperor, shot him dead.
"His Majesty was deeply affected by the occurrence."
Observe the stark nakedness of it. There is no decorative treatment here,
no evidence of an attempt to impress upon the report the individuality
of the paper. The Editor rightly divined that the simple, splendid
tragedy of the event offered no opportunity for a display of his art. His
art, indeed, could have nothing to do with it. If all news were of a
similar quality, the art of journalism, as it exists at present, would
instantly expire, and a new art would arise to take its place, though
what the nature of that new art would be, it is hazardous to guess. One
may, however, assert that journalism in its highest development will
only thrive so long and so far as the march of events continues, in the
eyes of the majority, to be a dull, monotonous and funereal procession.
The insensible hack may trust himself to present attractively an
occurrence or a man that all the world concedes to be inherently

attractive; but it needs a heaven-born artist, trained in the subtleties of
his craft and gifted with the inexhaustible appreciative wonder of a
child, to deal finely and picturesquely with, say, bi-metallism or the
Concert of Europe.
* * * * *
And how to create interest where interest is not? Alas, no dissertation
and no teacher can answer the question. As in other arts, so in
journalism, the high essentials may not be inculcated. It is the mere
technique which is imparted. By a curious paradox, the student is
taught, of art, only what he already knows. Anyone can learn to write,
and to write well, in any given style; but to see, to discern the
interestingness which is veiled from the crowd--that comes not by
tuition; rather by intuition.
The best treatise on art can only hope:--
(1) To indicate the lines of study and training which should be pursued
in order to acquire the measure of mechanical accomplishment
necessary to the right using of the artistic faculty.
(2) If the artistic faculty exists but is dormant,